Most people who think seriously about marketing and communications would agree that it currently faces some of the biggest challenges in its history. The disagreement is over how marketing and brand managers should respond: should they look for new ways of communicating their message, or for a new discipline altogether?
At Not Actual Size we believe in a new discipline. The current changes in media consumption which are so challenging for marketers belong to a larger shift in the way people think about themselves in relation to business and brands. Deference is vanishing and being replaced with the power of references, and promises need to be followed up by ideas and delivery. In simple terms, consumers are no longer prepared to suck up everything a brand says.
The most effective cut-through now comes from what a brand does, and not what it says; from genuine points of difference brought to life in real-life engaging activities. Such unique experiences create cultural equity, and allow consumers to engage directly with brands with which they suddenly have something in common beyond product. They can make conventional advertising seem as flat as a 48-sheet poster.
Not Actual Size creates activities like these; live brand experiences that people talk about. They encourage exploration of the brand story; open up opportunities to build a genuine brand/consumer relationship, and create the sort of one-off, unrepeatable human events that generate unique history and culture.
It should also be said that they are very practical. They tend to solve problems more directly than conventional campaigns, while being scaleable and, frankly, cheaper in media terms. Of course we do not really believe that live brand experiences need to entirely replace existing media forms. But we do believe that all forward-looking brands who want control of their own destinies need to stop talking about how they do it, and maybe just start doing it.